Years of delays of a plan that would create a sprawling entertainment complex at a onetime Greek airport has may mean two potential bidders on the project—Las Vegas-based Caesars Entertainment and Malaysia-based Genting—are losing interest.
As reported by the business journal Naftemporiki, the possible exit of those bidders has spurred the Greek Development and Investment Ministry to meet with two others, Mohegan Entertainment and Hard Rock International, and set a September 30 deadline for bids.
The €8 billion euro (US$8.91 billion) development of the abandoned Hellenikon International Airport on the coast near Athens has been in the planning stages for more than four years, gaining little traction.
Ministry chief Adonis Georgiadis said, “Without the tender for the casino the investment at Helleniko cannot proceed.”
According to the National Herald, newly elected Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has met with billionaire Spiros Latsis of Lamda Development to try to jumpstart the long-stalled project which has hit multiple roadblocks, bureaucratic and environmental. Lambda is the lead partner in a team that also includes Chinese investment company Fosun International and Abu Dhabi’s Eagle Hills.
The new PM blames the delays on former premier and now major opposition Radical Left SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras for blocking the project due to its foreign investors, even though he acknowledged they were necessary to an economic recovery.
The consortium plans to turn the former international airport into a sprawling complex with luxury residences, hotels, a yachting marina and a casino. An original plan for the property was to create the largest urban park in Europe; that plan was shelved because it would not yield desperately needed revenues for the government.
The complex on the Athenian Riviera will span more than 634,000 square meters (6.8 million square feet), according to Lamda. Bids for the project were first called for way back in 2011, a decade after the airport closed, and Lamda was chosen as the preferred investor in 2014.
Last year at this time, Lamda CEO Odysseus Athanasiou predicted that by April 2019, Hellenikon will have “an image of works underway rather than of neglect.” But the plan approved in February by the Greek Council of State remained a subject of dispute among casino advocates, environmentalists and archaeologists.
In March, Mohegan Gaming CEO Mario Kontomerkos said Athens “has the chance to become the center of the integrated resort casino world, because with a two-hour flight it is connected to 19 countries with 6 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the global GDP.”
Caesars Entertainment had previously shown interest but with the pending purchase by Eldorado Resorts, the focus of the company is on its U.S. assets with international expansion on the back burner.
Earlier this year, Games Magazine Brasil called the project “a landmark opportunity in the as-yet underpenetrated European market, occupying a designated prime location within the Hellinikon, the Kosmas metropolitan area on the site of the Athens former international airport and the adjacent coastal front.” It said the Greek government expects the development will have “a significant positive impact on the country’s economy.”
